T okio. (EFE).- El director japonés Shohei Imamura, unos de los pocos cineastas mundiales que ha ganado dos veces la Palma de Oro a la mejor película en el Festival de Cannes, falleció hoy de cáncer a los 79 años en un hospital de esta ciudad, informaron fuentes de la industria.
Imamura recibió por primera vez el máximo premio del certamen francés en 1983 por "La balada de Narayama" (Narayama bushiko), la historia de un pueblo que sobrevive a los rigores del tiempo y la escasez de alimentos abandonando a las personas de más de setenta años en el cercano monte Narayama.
En 1997 repitió triunfo en Cannes con "La anguila" (Unagi), centrada en la relación de una pareja formada por un homicida en libertad bajo palabra y una mujer que acepta trabajar en una barbería para él. La crítica mundial destacaba su humanismo y su inconformismo, con el que mostraba las contradicciones de una sociedad que cambiaba la tradición por el consumismo.
Nacido en Tokio, Imamura entró a trabajar en 1951 en los estudios Shochiku, donde fue ayudante del legendario Yasujiro Ozu, a quien criticaba a menudo por anular el alma de los actores con su estilo frío de dirección.
Una semblanza
La wsws nos ofrece la siguiente semblazna del cineasta japonés:
Widely known and respected by lovers of serious cinema, the 74-year-old Imamura was a key figure in the Nuberu Bagu (Japanese New Wave) and rightly considered one of Japan's most important post-World War II directors. An uncompromising defender of the most oppressed layers in society, his films, which are intricate, dark and robust with great moments of earthy humour and complex sexuality, challenged the moral values of contemporary society, contrasting the corruption of the so-called new Japan with government promises of democracy and freedom. Imamura's characters are often poverty-stricken women and invariably social outcasts—prostitutes, pimps, pornographers, black marketeers or others on the margins of society—but always portrayed with the utmost objectivity.
Born in 1926 in Tokyo, the son of a doctor, Imamura, was interested in the theatre at an early age and enrolled in literature studies in Waseda University in 1945, where he wrote plays and acted. On graduation in 1951 he joined Shochiku Films where he worked with several directors, including with Yasujiro Ozu on Early Summer (1951), The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) and Tokyo Story (1953).
Reacting against what he considered to be Ozu's conservatism, rigid camerawork and overly formal relationship with his actors, Imamura transferred to the Nikkatsu studios in 1954, where he worked as an assistant director and scriptwriter before making three feature films in 1958—Stolen Desire, a black comedy about an itinerant acting troupe working in the rough-and-tumble red light districts, Light of Night and Endless Desire .
He then made My Second Brother (1959), which deals with the plight of four orphans in a poor Japanese mining town, and followed this in the 1960s with six brilliant films: Pigs and Battleships (1961), about teenagers attempting to survive by selling pigs fed on food wastes left by US occupying forces; The Insect Woman (1963), a tragicomedy tracing the life of a country girl forced into war production factories during the war and then, after Japan's defeat, into prostitution; Unholy Desire (1964), about rape and oppression; The Pornographers—An Introduction to Anthropology, (1965), a black comedy about a man involved in the blue movie industry who becomes obsessed with his lover's daughter; Man Vanishes (1967) and The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968).
In the 1970s Imamura directed The History of Postwar Japan as told by a Bar Hostess and Vengeance is Mine, and in the 1980s, The Ballad of Narayama, a graphic depiction of village life in 19th century Japan, Zengen, and Black Rain, about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After a nine-year break he wrote and directed The Eel and Dr Akagi in 1998. The Ballad of Narayama and The Eel both won Palme d'Or awards at Cannes making him one of only three international directors who have twice won this award.
In the mid-1970s, following the breakdown of the Japanese studio system and dwindling opportunities for full-time cinema training, Imamura established the Japanese Academy of Visual Arts, which he still heads today.
Richard Phillips, de la misma wsws y con traducción de Emiko Yamaguchi, le hizo la siguiente entrevista
Y en imdb podemos consultar su filomgrafía
